The personal blog of Peter Lee a.k.a. "China Hand"... Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel, and an open book to those who read. You are welcome to contact China Matters at the address chinamatters --a-- prlee.org or follow me on twitter @chinahand.

Wednesday, April 03, 2013

An Editor Falls as China’s Foreign Ministry Shows its Hand on North Korea; Saudi/Qatar Split on Syria Confirmed

Today, China Matters wins the Internet…or at least the North
Korea/Syria contrarian sub-category…

A couple items that demonstrate the value of close and
impartial reading of news reports…or dumb luck? We report, you decide.

First, North Korea.On February 28, I wrote:

Will the PRC Abandon North Korea?

Nope.

In my current piece for Asia Times Online … I argue
that the PRC leadership has, for better or worse, reconciled itself to a
nuclear North Korea, since the alternative—the Korean peninsula unified under a
pro-US democracy—is unattractive both economically and strategically.

So I was rather nonplussed—actually I felt kind of stupid,
mingled with the queasy suspicion that I had committed a floater before a
worldwide audience--when Sinocism posted a link to a Financial Times op-ed by a CCP theorist, Deng Yuwen, titled China
should abandon North Korea.

However, not to worry.Deng apparently fills the reformer/contrarian seat as deputy editor at Study Times, a journal of the CCP’s
Central Party School.

He is an active op-ed presence in the Chinese domestic
media and achieved a certain notoriety when his lengthy critical appraisal of
the Hu Jintao era—Legacy of the
Hu Jintao/Wen Jiabao Regime --was posted at Caijing and then got
yanked.Deng plows the familiar if
admirable furrow of between-the-lines reformers, as can be gleaned from a translation
by Eric Mu of Danwei of the “ten challenges” that Hu and Wen left for the
incoming team.

In other words, his op-ed is probably an outlier and not
reflective of CCP policy…

Now Sinocism
points to an April 1 report in Chosun Ilbo (no, it doesn’t look like a spoof):

Deng told the Chosun Ilbo by telephone that the article cost
him the job. "I was relieved of the position because of that article, and
I'm suspended indefinitely. Although I'm still being paid by the company, I
don't know when I will be given another position."

Deng said the Chinese Foreign Ministry was "very upset" by the
article and made a call to the Central Party School to complain.

Of course, Deng presumably did not
decide to write for the Financial Times on his own initiative, and the Central Party
School is probably a stronghold of reformers trying to kickstart some more
enlightened policies in the time-honored fashion—though I don’t see any signs
that there is a high leader of an aggressively reformist bent egging them on or
even protecting them against the ire of the Foreign Ministry.

As to North Korean policy in
general, I think that the DPRK is not the clown college that American coverage
would lead one to believe.With the
heightening of tensions and the use of those tensions to justify the restart of
the reactor at Yongbyon (and, presumably the double-time removal of fuel rods
to achieve a weapons-ready grade of recovered plutonium), North Korea is well
on its way to developing a plus-size nuclear arms program that will allow it—like
Israel—to punch above its weight in regional affairs.

Next, Syria:

Back in November, a coming out party was thrown in Doha for
the new and improved Syrian opposition and its new and improved figurehead, Ma’ad
al Khatib.

As the reliable Guardian (reliable, I must say, for its optimistic,
fact-exempt fluffing of the Syrian opposition) put it:

There was, perhaps, a
more significant element to this reorganization that was largely overlooked -
the relative absence of Saudi Arabia at SNCORF's coming-out party. The meeting
in Doha was orchestrated by the United States, Turkey, and Qatar. Qatar's prime
minister keynoted the opening session and "presided" over the
expanded meeting of the Syrian opposition. [3]

Apparently, no Saudi Arabian heavyweight attended. That is significant because
the reorganization of the Syrian overseas opposition was a reaction against the
inadequacies of the Qatar-backed SNC, but also a response to the crisis caused
by the mushrooming influence of Saudi-funded jihadis inside Syria.

Foreign efforts to support the insurrection had largely turned into
directionless dithering, thanks in large part to Western unwillingness to
validate and empower the expatriate and Muslim Brotherhood-dominated SNC with
significant amounts of arms. Saudi Arabian Salafists displayed no such qualms
about dispatching arms and jihadis to Syria, with the result that extremists
have filled the revolutionary vacuum.

Today, via the Angry Arab blog quotes from a report on the
Free Syrian Army by Elizabeth O’Bagy of the Institute for the Study of War :

Understanding Syrian conflict

" "The case of the november
2012 Doha meeting provides a stark example of how diverse funding streams
exacerbate the problem of fragmentation among rebels. On the one hand, rebel
commanders were paid by Qatari sponsors to attend the meeting. On the other
hand, Saudi sponsors paid rebel commanders not to attend the meeting.""

See page 15 of O’Bagy’s report for a detailed and valuable discussion
on how the competition between Saudi Arabia and Qatar played out at Doha.

So, let the record show that careful parsing of
open-source materials in real time can yield some valuable conclusions.

4 comments:

"I think that the DPRK is not the clown college that American coverage would lead one to believe."

Finally someone says it. I'm dying for some analysis of the DPRK situation beyond the ubiquitous, inane "tiny dick syndrome" and "they're craaaazy!" propaganda. It's the 21st century version of Goebbels' lie about Poles sending cavalry against Wehrmacht tanks.

Would greatly appreciate some elaboration, if you'd care to offer it. Why is all this going on now, and in what ways is DPRK being provoked that we're not hearing about? I don't mean the "practice sorties" but the geopolitics.

I don't really get why the bellicose rhetoric is needed to "justify" Yongbyon's restart. Seems to me they'd be better off just firing up the reactor without first having put the US military into a heightened state of alert.